


No matter how many fish in the sea

by allthegardens



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Family, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5445716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthegardens/pseuds/allthegardens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>November, 2025.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No matter how many fish in the sea

After the war, you and your brothers visit the Grand Canyon, in America. Three hours by car out from the state border, so you drive wearing the gloves your older brother shoved at you this morning after he saw the arm-length icicles hanging from the motel porch, after it took twenty minutes for the engine to warm. Snow begins to fall thinly halfway through the drive, not so much that you can't see the road, enough for your younger brother to stare without pretense. For the last decade of your life, winters meant heavy rain pebbling the dark surface of the harbor, and the same weak filtered light, unchanging from sunrise to sunset. When you were young it was different. The city of your birth, its long months of bracing cold, thick snow turning quickly to slush underfoot, swirling snow to transform solid buildings into mountains. 

Arizona, cloudless for three hundred and sixty-four days out of three hundred sixty-five, and when you and your brothers arrive, the sky is a curtain—showing through in pockets, otherwise too bright to turn your face into it fully. If you open your eyes you'll blink once against the light and twice against the moisture in the air—enough to reach over and trace a line of water down your younger brother's cheek. You stand near the edge, you think of the time it would take for a thrown pebble to fall. A mile down, the tributary flows sluggishly in biting cold, the river wears down the stone walls, revealing veins of color amid wind-smooth, sun-bleached rock. You think, the space this canyon holds is vast- stretching far into the distance, deep into the earth. You think, this canyon could hold a city, this canyon could hold many cities. You think, this canyon could not hold the sea.

The week before, your younger brother insisted on seeing a lesser known canyon, even further out than Zion. Past the numbing cold, this is what you remember: sheer cliffs, still air, boot tracks through pristine snow, snow in sheets atop red-orange chimneys of stone. You forget your gloves in the snow after peeling them off to scoop up two handfuls—this, your fingertips red and stinging from the snowmelt, the taste of it in your mouth, your unsuspecting older brother with snowflakes in his hair. That you can cradle contentment in the space between your palms. You three left soon after for fear of frostbite at the point of his arm where metal meets skin, your cheeks ruddy, breathing white clouds into the frozen air of the car, wriggling your toes to get back the feeling.  


You visit the Grand Canyon for two days. Today, the second day, the sky is that same shade of blue as you saw the week before, painfully clear and endless- but today there is wind. Years later, it is not you who will recall the moment, but your two brothers—  


the sun casting warm shadows, cliffs golden from light and rich brown in silhouette, lines of sight for miles in every direction. Early morning, the bracing wind, the sky like a jewel. And the people gathered near the lip of the canyon, faces tilted down, looking into the space below. And you, standing near the lip of the canyon, face tilted up, looking at the sky above.

**Author's Note:**

> Title completely and utterly stolen from tailwind's BDS fic of the same name. This is actually part of a longer fic where they survive. I think i'll finish it someday, but for now, a snippet that's spent way too much time on my drive.


End file.
